Mason-2.24

NAME

DESCRIPTION

A few quick examples to get your feet wet with Mason. See Mason::Manual::Setup for how to use Mason to generate web sites.

EXAMPLE 1

Hello world (from command-line)

After installing Mason, you should have a mason command in your installation path (e.g. /usr/local/bin). Try this:

% mason
Hello! The local time is <% scalar(localtime) %>.
^D

(where '^D' means ctrl-D or EOF). You should see something like

Hello! The local time is Wed Mar 2 17:11:54 2011.

The mason command reads in a Mason component (template), runs it, and prints the result to standard output. Notice that the tag

<% scalar(localtime) %>

was replaced with the value of its expression. This is called a substitution tag and is a central piece of Mason syntax.

EXAMPLE 2

Email generator (from script)

The command line is good for trying quick things, but eventually you're going to want to put your Mason components in files.

In a test directory, create a directory comps and create a file email.mc with the following:

<%class>
has 'amount';
has 'name';
</%class>
Dear <% $.name %>,
We are pleased to inform you that you have won $<% sprintf("%.2f", $.amount) %>!
Sincerely,
The Lottery Commission
<%init>
die "amount must be a positive value!" unless $.amount > 0;
</%init>

In addition to the substitution tag we've seen before, we declare two attributes, amount and name, to be passed into the component; and we declare a piece of initialization code to validate the amount.

In the same test directory, create a script test.pl with the following:

Line 3 creates a Mason interpreter, the main Mason object. It specifies two parameters: a component root, indicating the directory hierarchy where your components will live; and a data directory, which Mason will use for internal purposes such as class generation and caching.

Line 4 runs the template - notice that the .mc extension is added automatically - passing values for the name and amount attributes.

Run test.pl, and you should see

Dear Joe,
We are pleased to inform you that you have won $1500.00!
Sincerely,
The Lottery Commission